Grade Level: 1st to 5th; Type: Psychology
This project examines whether people’s perceptions of taste are influenced by their sight.
Can the color of a food or drink affect a person’s perception of its taste? or Can our eyes fool our taste buds?
- Three containers of apple juice
- Red and green food coloring
- 60 small, clear plastic cups
- 20 test subjects
- With the food coloring, dye one container of juice red and one container of juice green.
- Pour a couple of inches of juice into each cup so that you have 20 cups of red juice, 20 cups of green juice, and 20 cups of uncolored juice.
- Place one cup of each color of juice in front of a test subject.
- Ask your subject to taste the red juice and tell you what flavor it is.
- Ask your subject to taste the green juice and tell you what flavor it is.
- Ask your subject to taste the uncolored juice and tell you what flavor it is.
- Record their answers.
- Repeat steps 3 to 7 for all of your subjects.
- Analyze your results. Did the color of the juice affect your subjects’ perceptions of their flavors? Did people mis-identify the flavors in keeping with the colors. (For example: Did they think the red juice tasted like fruit punch or cherry?)
Terms/Concepts: Taste buds, Sense of Taste, Sense of Sight